


Things That Money Can't Buy

by Virodeil



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Original Work, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Additional Warnings in Author’s Note, Adventure, Changing lives forever, Character Development, Character Study, Contemplation, Cross-cultural, Cultural Differences, Cultural References, Disability Fest, Gen, Indonesia, Indonesian Character, Indonesian Food, Original Characters Galore - Freeform, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Third Person Limited, POV Tony Stark, Pre-Iron Man 1, Present Tense, Slice of Life, Slow Build, Slow To Update, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Gets a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Is Not Helping, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, Tony Stark’s Brand of Language, Tour Bus, Tourism, Travel, Travelogue, character introspection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-04 18:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18349136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Virodeil/pseuds/Virodeil
Summary: Tony Stark commits his worst blunder yet. So, Pepper Potts, his incensed personal assistant and on-and-off girlfriend, thrusts him into something that he has no preparation for, experience in nor love for, in order to – hopefully – build on his nearly nonexistent empathy and restraint. A bunch of unique people exploring a unique little island becomes his lesson – and maybe… more….





	1. Prologue: The Instigator

**Author's Note:**

> 1. Mainly _Iron Man_ fandom, with slight crossover with my original travelogue and a little bit of other Marvel fandoms, especially _Thor_.  
> 2. Set a few months before the canon timeline of the bombing and kidnapping in afghanistan. Film-verse and comic-verse, although my knowledge in both is limited.  
> 3. Original characters galore. Disability Fest. The tags don’t lie, people. There will be other tags/warnings as the story progresses, mentioned in the author’s notes.  
> 4. Beware of Pre-IronMan Tony’s childishness, his blunt language, his “free” lifestyle, his many issues and many more. And the “touchy subjects” don’t stop just on him, people.  
> 5. Non-English dialogues will be put as they are, with translations immediately available nearby if possible. Holler if you don’t like this arrangement, people – and for other things, too, as you like it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a sheet of paper on Tony’s desk. Pepper comes in and sees it. And then….

“Tony….”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“That is a _paternity test_.”

 

“And?”

 

“You….”

 

“…”

 

“Let me see. – I… It’s a _positive match_ , Tony.”

 

“And?”

 

“Tony….”

 

“It’s a one-night stand, Pep. I don’t even know who the mother is. Her father just barged into my office and threw this on my face before the security got him. I–.”

 

“Tony…. What’re you going to do with the child?”

 

“Well, nothing, obviously, even if it’s true. What can I do, anyway? There’s no room for a kid in my lifestyle; you know that. ‘Sides, got no good example of parenthood, here. Won’t get a kid into the sort of childhood I had.”

 

“ _Tony_.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You…!”


	2. Part 1: The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper is _never_ to be angered, because her retaliation is unexpected, torturous, thorough, and… well….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beware of Tony calling Pepper names internally, in this chapter. Just think, for a person used to be in charge, and feeling he’s done no wrong at that, to have one of his only friends being mad at him for seemingly totally no reason at all and shunting him to the back-end of nowhere… and here, Pepper is not only just his _personal assistant_ at that time, not yet his CEO, but also hurting him where it counts. The name calling works the same as in other close relationships: “The only person who is allowed to scold/hit/name-call/ruin that person is me, no others; you do that to that person, you face my wrath.”

The airport terminal is somewhat decently large but terribly old-fashioned. The time is hell o’clock in the middle of somebody’s usual sleep cycle. And still, anything is _yet_ to begin, although a poor certain somebody has _already_ had to endure _eighteen hours_ of a plane flight straight from the old US of A just now. The luggage is limited _only_ to a few pieces of _boring_ clothes and bodily necessities, at that, with no engineering kit included by the sadistic bitch that should remain unnamed. The flow of money is also limited to _just_ a thick, unwieldy wallet of local currency, plus a credit card of a local bank that tops up at just the equivalent of a hundred thousand US dollars.

 

 _And_ , to add salt to a gaping wound, one must stick closely to a bunch of total – and _totally unknown_ – strangers for a week. It’s for a boring trip to somewhere else – _far, far away_ – from good places like Las Vegas and the Karibians, to boot, so one can’t possibly find girls for some decent one-night-stand.

 

No returning home or deviating from the trip, _too_ , or the sadistic bitch will totally ruin the _whole_ of Stark _International_ – not just Stark Industries. And all that, for _an ignored paternity test_.

 

Anthony Edward Stark, garbed in a boring, dorky, bold-yellow uniform T-shirt, a pair of cargo shorts and a pair of trekking sandals, stands awkwardly in a place he doesn’t bother to know, ruing his carelessness in not hiding _that infernal thing_ from Pepper’s view that time, barely twenty-four hours ago. He is parked at the very edge of a very loose circle of various people and luggage, for once speechless and motionless – and very, very, very uncertain, as well – and he _hates_ it.

 

Not knowing what to do, he fiddles with his Starkphone – which Pepper thankfully _didn’t_ confiscate – and takes a video of the milling little crowd.

 

And what a crowd it is! It stands out, not by size but by sheer diversity – in visible disabilities as well as, to a certain point, in complexion and features, although they all look Asian to him, and they do wear the boring, dorky, bold-yellow T-shirt that he got to wear, too.

 

A couple of Chinese-looking old women, with one of them looking like a wrinkled kid to boot, sit idly in a couple of basic wheelchairs. A somewhat-blank-eyed, brown-skinned, somewhat Indian-looking middle-aged woman loiters nearby, fidgetting with her bag and chatting with the two on wheelchairs.

 

A white-eyed woman is fussing on a funny-voiced man wearing both black sunglasses and a pair of hearing aids, with a normal-looking teen girl who look like them loitering nearby. The three look like a family of Chinese-descended, disability-riddled people, except for the kid.

 

Another Chinese-looking teen girl, but a lot fatter, is looking blankly at nothing, standing at the other edge of the crowd with a full-looking hiking pack on her back, a huge water bottle slung at her side, and a just-as-full waistbag round her somewhat bulging belly. There’s also yet another teen girl nearby, this time taller than the previous two, though slimmer than the second one, and looking like a wide mixture of races. Both of her feet are braced and booted, a pair of magnifying specs perch on her nose, and a pair of wooden walking sticks are clutched in one hand by their armpit supports, apparently not needed yet. And she is chatting with an androgynous, black-skinned, curly-headed someone that’s probably just as short as the wrinkled-kid old woman if she could stand on her own feet, although there’s no disability to be spotted here, just like there’s none on the first girl.

               

A pair of brown-skinned, round-eyed, wavy-haired teens in somewhat worn clothes, one boy and one girl, are chatting excitedly in sign language and meaningless noises near the wheelchaired women, watched by a specky man, standing paces away, who might be their teacher or guardian. Another man, bearing a more ordinary and less full backpack than the fat second girl, is standing beside the teacher/guardian, looking round with a visible effort despite the okay look of his round – or perhaps rounded – eyes.

 

A Chinese-looking elderly man is talking softly with a brown-skinned young woman who looks to be his adopted daughter, after parting with a Chinese-looking older woman who seems to be the girl’s elder – or eldest – adoptive sister.

 

A soft-looking man is talking to a fussy, blank-eyed woman who looks to be the head of the group despite her somewhat obvious blindness. Four – no, five – young adults, men and women, mill round with suitcases _and cardboard boxes_ in their hands, piling them on a few airport lorries and labelling each item with marker on a white sticker. A skinny boy – maybe nine? Ten? Eight? – who looks like the soft-looking man and the fussy woman, darts about, looking at absolutely _everything_ , including – to his semi-displeasure – Tony himself.

 

Well. Twenty-four, including his annoyed self. Not to little a crowd, and yet not too much. It’s… nice, in a way. But he wishes he could just… go elsewhere. If only Pepper won’t notice _and won’t flay him alive for deserting his “punishment”_!

 

And now the ever-curious kid is heading _right at him_ ….


	3. Part 2: The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony _loves_ flying _everything_ ; helicopter, pioneer plane, hang-glider, you name it. But when it comes to boarding a commercial aeroplane….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief scene of anxiety/panic attack. Beware, people. After all, for someone who grows up extra priveleged, the economy class of a cheap commercial aeroplane must hold a different view….

Not knowing _any_ of the crowd is bad. Unable to communicate with any of the said crowd because of some flimsy language barrier, though, is _worse_.

 

Well, it’s not the first time that Tony Stark is a part yet outside of the crowd; far from it; _but still_. Did Peps have to punish him with _this_? – Google Translate is worthless for things other than _written_ stock phrases. He hasn’t yet loaded JARVIS with spoken translation coding, too. _And_ he has no tool, nor chance, nor space, nor mood to work on it.

 

Presently, he’s stomping at the end of the odd procession that tromps along the tunnel bridge to the aeroplane, following behind the short, fat, blind girl and the tallest, visually impaired, not-so-ambulatory girl plus her kid-sized, black-skinned buddy, who seem to have formed an instant friendship with each other. His suitcase has been added to one of the airport lorries, and now he is left with only a very unfashionable sling bag that makes him look like an overgrown schoolboy.

 

And then, they come upon the plane, and _into_ it.

 

Shockingly, it’s the _worst_ experience, thus far.

 

Tony has _never_ had to go by commercial plane before, for whatever reason. Even Pepper, however irrationally mad she was with him pretty recently, didn’t make him take the commercial plane to travel here. And now he finds that a commercial plane is… _very, very, very stuffed_ – with various strangers, with various luggage, with small, uncomfortable-looking seats set three by three with hardly any legroom….

 

He stumbles into a stop at the beginning of the long, narrow lane that divides the rows of seats, overwhelmed by a strong wave of claustrophobia that threatens to make him hyperventilate. ` _This is so **ridiculous** ,_` his mind tries to tell him. ` _Stark men are made of iron. Stark men are afraid of nothing. And this sardine tin is **nothing**._` But the fact remains that his brand-new sandals are glued fast on the cheap decking of the… _thing_ … and he can’t move anywhere, even if he wants to.

 

And then a hesitant, fumbling hand skips along his arm – searchingly, not intrusively – and short, fat fingers tug gently at his own once they meet with each other.

 

Tony blinks. – It’s the short, fat, blind girl, urging him onward just as hesitantly as the way she tugs at his arm. She’s clustered with her new buddies in the space of lane in front of him, and they’re all staring at him, and there are people urging him to move much less politely and much more loudly from behind him and beyond those girls, and all the impatient noises just smother him more, and….

 

“Come on,” the short, fat, blind girl says, and it takes Tony a long, long minute to understand that _yes_ , she speaks English, _yes_ , he’s not hallucinating from lack of oxygen or panic, and _yes_ , she wants him to go with her.

 

It’s the first time in his recallable memory that Tony stark _obeys_ something with alacrity.

 

He is supposed to sit by the window, judging from what’s written on his ticket slip, but the shortest, black-skinned, androgynous girl kindly waves him to her seat, which is by the lane. The girl herself sits by the window, and her half-blind, half-crippled buddy sits in the middle between them.

 

The short, fat, blind girl sits alone on the middle seat across the lane one row to the front, and she looks scared of the prospect. Unfortunately, Tony is being a selfish bastard right now, more than ever, and refuses to exchange his marginally better spot with her cramped one.

 

He so _hates_ being weak, and letting people see that he is weak, and having this sudden claustrophobia is weak, and he _absolutely_ does _not_ want to experience that, _ever again_. He’s going to return home directly from wherever they’re flying to once the trip’s finished, and he’ll be using his _private jet_ for that, regardless of what Pep’ll going to say about it.

 

A uniformed woman – the head of the flight attendants? – prattles on about safety measures. The half-blind, half-crippled girl seated beside him grows more anxious the longer the said woman drones on about what-ifs, clutching at the two detractable armrests in a death-grip. Tony suspects she’s never been in an aeroplane before, or maybe fears having to take a flight to go wherever they’re going but has no other choice.

 

Well, she’s not alone. ` _Welcome to the club._ `

 

But this time, he thinks he has the right remedy, one that will also help him.

 

After all, talking can solve many things… except for Pepper in a fine temper… and the girl might speak some English….

 

Well, _anyway_ , “Hey, I’m Tony. You?”


	4. The Destination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sucky trip begins with a fright, and some fumbling, much griping, and….

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chandra and Logi are my Marvel-fandom Ocs. Lisa and the other tour participants are from my real travelogue, yet unpublished, tentatively titled: _Belitung, from the Eyes of the Blind._  
>  FYI, the chapter contains a rather rough flight. For those who don't like air travels… like me… please beware.

The hot, stale-aired, noisy, cheap-looking sardine tin of an aeroplane swings to the right, then to the left. It slowly arces over a land with baldy patches of forest and hills and housing and savana, before returning to the sea and back again. Nauseated and nervous, and still very much feeling trapped and squished, Tony looks away from the little round window past his two seatmates and back to his mobile phone’s screen. But Black Sabbath can’t distract him from the horrible flying of the unknown pilot and the tenseness that’s beginning to saturate the _many, many_ passengers, _including himself_.

 

Worse, then Logi – the shortest, black-skinned, androgynous girl seated by the window – worriedly murmurs about the plane having to penetrate a large, thick sheet of rainclouds.

 

` _Damn. This cheap little tin can? Going **through** a storm? Pep’d better feel guilty when she fishes my sodden remains out of the sea! This is all her fault!_`

 

The plane _shakes_ however many rounds of aimless, useless, nerve-inducing circling later, as it dips sharply forward and downward. The cruel flight attendants have deprived everyone of their distractions, so Tony can’t even wall off the loud rumbling sound that drowns the horror of a flying thing with his beloved hard-rock music. And he can’t help asking to himself, ` _Are we really landing as the pilot said **half an hour ago**? Are we crashing instead because he can’t land this thing? Is this thing able to bear such a rough landing? Is it too packed and little equipped for a storm landing?_`

 

And he is unfortunate enough to sneak a glance at the window just in the… right… moment.

 

The fat droplets of water that relentlessly pelt the window blur much of the view outside, but not _all_. Helplessly, he watches as the plane speeds along the runway, _then to the edge of it_.

 

The plane _does_ stop, on the very edge of the tarmac, but his heart _doesn’t_ stop galloping till long afterwards, as other passengers of this horror of a flying thing bustle and push and trundle to fetch their belongings from the overhead racks and exit the plane.

 

He’s _really, really, really_ going to go home by _his own plane_ , straight from this barbaric, primordial place, screw whatever Pepper wants him to do otherwise. Not even his dad’s old company – and thus his usual lifestyle, resulting from the profit gained from its collective revenue – is worth his life!

 

Chandra – the half-blind, half-crippled, tallest-out-of-the-ilk girl seated beside him, on the middle of the left-side-going-out row – seems to agree with his freaked-out silent assessment, judging from how shakily she’s fumbling to free herself from her seat belt. Logi, her buddy since her junior-high years about a decade ago, or so she confessed during their hour- long trip, is busy stuffing herself into a thick, waterproof hooded jaket that seems to be an overkill in this tropical country, with a tight look on her face that he must be mirroring right now.

 

Well, at least it’s not only Tony Stark that’s being a weakling in this. If he’s feeling generous at the end of this trip, he might call for a second jet and invite these two to fly in it, back to the airport where they gathered at the beginning of this weird, horrendous trip to nowhere land.

 

He might laugh at their residual fright later on, though. So, following the lead of various other passengers, he reactivates his phone as the plane goes into a parking position; but, instead of phoning anybody like they do, he records the moment in a video.

 

“The moment” stretches to all the way down the plane and into a shuttle bus that rocks badly on the uneven tarmac, regardless of the rain that’s still enthusiastically pounding on this foreign piece of earth. And its subjects are not only his two former seatmates, but also the short, fat, blind girl – named Lisa, Chandra said – who was the first to help him and talk to him in English when he stepped foot in the packed, cheap little tin that brought him here, wherever this is. When possible, it includes the other bold-yellow-T-shirt-wearing participants of this trip.

 

He can’t help it. None of them are beautiful according to his standard, but all of them are… unique. And the ways they help and interact with each other are interesting, as well. The sign-language-communicating girl, for example, is now guiding Lisa the short, fat, blind girl along in the human current; and the blind one knows to just make her lip movements slow and exaggerated when talking to the other girl, instead of trying to talk loudly.

 

It reminds him about the happi _er_ experiences he shared with his mother all those decades ago, when she brought him to events for the disabled and other “unfortunate” people sponsored by the Maria Stark Foundation. Those “unfortunate” people gave him what he craved: attention; and not all with ulterior motives behind their indulgence to a kid – and later, a teenager – too.

 

Well, come to think of it again, this time their interaction could be even… purer. Just between human being and human being in search of socialising. Because, as far as he knows, Pepper didn’t seem to warn them that _the_ tony Stark would be joining them in this trip.

 

In fact, she forced him to travel incognito, _including making him shave off his poor goatee_.

 

If only things were less _primitive_! The airport terminal they’re entering presently isn’t even larger than the grand ballroom of the SI office tower in LA! And it’s so _open-aired_! And now they’ve got to wait and scramble alongside all the other passengers of the flying sardine tin that brought them here for their baggage; all crowded at either side of the luggage-delivering conveyer belt, like the simple robots that operates the assembly lines in SI manufacturing facilities.

 

To think that the trip has just officially begun….


	5. The Warming Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s always a warming up before any machine can operate. In a way, Tony is similar. He just doesn’t expect it to be… _this_ way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last available chapter. Hopefully I can resume it before long.

Carrying one’s own luggage and storing it in a public transport is _not_ something that Tony Stark has ever experienced before, just like flying in a commercial aeroplane. But he has no outlet for the complaint, since other members of this totally unknown tour group are busy with their own luggage, or helping others with their luggage, or helping others with their luggage _and_ helping those persons move from point A to point B.

 

The medium-sized bus that they’re to take, parked just outside of the tiny, primitive airport terminal of wherever this is, slowly but surely gets full of luggage and people. And, after storing his suitcase in the baggage space under it, Tony can only antsily wait near the front of the bus, together with his three new girl buddies – Chandra, Logi and Lisa.

 

Why? Because he’s _never_ taken a bus anywhere, _too_. Usually, in the events held by Maria Stark Foundation, the bulk of the participants travelled by bus, big or small, but he _never_ mingled among them there. Doing so feels so… _intimate_ , not to mention inconvenient and tideous and just as trapping as the horrible commercial-aeroplane experience taught him. In such a small, cramped, uncomfortable space, for no doubt quite a long time, among total strangers but for his three brand-new acquaintances….

 

“They can be your friends too, you know,” Logi murmurs, with understanding in her eyes, as she seems to catch where his own restless eyes are roaming.

 

He gives her a look and a huff. “I don’t know you people. I don’t speak your language. I don’t even know where this is, and… well… I didn’t want to be here. No offence to you or your friends,” he points out.

 

“Why did you join us, then, if you are so unhappy to be here?” she inquires. She doesn’t sound nor look bothered in the least about the fact of it, though, unlike Lisa and Chandra.

 

Lisa even grumbles lowly, “Why didn’t you go home?” and Tony can’t answer that, nor explain even to himself why that statement hurts him, while he’s been thinking of that himself right from the moment he stepped foot on this not-so-developed country – wherever this is.

 

He can’t tell them the truth, either, in case this gets to the rumour mongers and the tabloids.

 

At least, that’s what he says to himself.

 

How glad – no, _relieved_ – he feels, when one of the young adults that seem to act as this group of disabled people’s assistants comes up to them and, judging from how Logi’s motioning Tony towards the bus, tells them to board. He parks his bottom on the front row, on the lane seat that overlooks the front stairs, and puts his sling bag on the window seat beside him. – Nope, he’s not in the mood to share a bench with anybody right now, and he might do this for the rest of the trip. Easier in the heart and in the mind, and good for the safety of his secret identity, too.

 

But then Logi comes up, and _semi-vaults over the railing that parts the first row from the staircase_ , and his sling bag gets plopped on his lap with an admonishing but light-toned, “We do need some space to sit, you know. Do not take it all for yourself.”

 

He gives her a sulky glare, trying to be dignified even so. “I need space for my bag,” he says. “It’s pretty heavy.”

 

“Shall I exchange it for Lisa’s pack, then? So you do have something valid to complain about?” she grins.

 

A reluctant giggle bursts out of him, caught between a snort and a snigger.

 

“Why don’t you do it yourself, Gi?” the owner of the hinted-at heavy pack pipes up from the row behind them, right behind Tony. “I would like to know if you are drowned in it or not. I think you can even hide in it.”

 

Tony truly bursts out laughing now, her earlier hurtful remark forgotten, and it’s Logi’s turn to give him the stink eye.

 

“No,” Chandra joins in from beside her new buddy, giggling in mirthful relish. “Logi don’t… doesn’t fit there. They fit – but they fit in bigger bag. Carrier. I try, last year. We go – went, to Kelimutu, and Logi… felt, cold, because of wind. Very high wind there. They hide in my bag… pack. Carrier pack.”

 

Three voices burst out laughing, drowning Logi’s half-hearted whinging.

 

And only afterwards, as the apparent tour leader of their group begins to speak to the crowd from the entry space before Tony and Logi, does Tony realise that _the bus has been on the way for some time already_.

 

He has briefly forgotten his previous concerns and, dare he admit, _fears_.

 

Then, maybe, just maybe, things don’t always have to be miserable? Even though this is supposed to be his punishment for whatever Pepper thought he’d done wrong?

 

Well, he can only hope…

 

…And secure his alliance, of course, like a good businessman ought to in a tough situation like this.

 

So, shifting to the lane-side and peeking his head to the row behind, he says, “Lisa, you be my interpreter for the whole trip, ‘kay? We can talk about prices later, and I can describe the sights to you. – Chandra, you put Logi in a leash and lend her to me for company, ‘kay? If she tries to run away, just borrow Lisa’s pack and put her in there. And – _ow_!”

 

Logi has just struck the back of his head with a solid open-palm hit, and Tony finds himself sprawled ungainly on top of a cardboard box barring the lane-way beside his seat.

 

 _But it’s worth it_.


End file.
